Clerides: no point in seeing my term through

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Petros Clerides, who is stepping down 19 days before he was due to retire, told the state broadcaster he was resigning because there was nothing left for him to do.

Clerides told CyBC on Saturday that he was due to retire on October 4. Instead, his last day on the job will be September 15.

Hanging on for just a little longer would not be useful, since in that time span “no one can plan or handle anything,” he said.

The attorney-general (AG) dismissed suggestions he did not get along with the current administration describing his relationship with the president as “very good”.

Clerides recently exchanged words with the government over a committee of inquiry appointed to investigate the causes of Cyprus’ near financial meltdown. Former AG Alecos Markides said the committee was technically illegal because of the way it was set up. The government said the AG had signed off on the procedure, but Clerides said he had not been asked to deliver a legal opinion.

The committee has asked the AG to rule whether the refusal of former president Demetris Christofias to accept oral questioning was legal. Clerides, who now has a week left in office, has not responded.

 

 

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.